Boxee gains an app store, to appear on hardware in 2010

A new version of Boxee brings an app store and API, allowing developers to …

Boxee, the open source media center that launched a full-frontal assault on our living rooms this past year, has introduced an open store for adding third-party apps and services. Combined with an API for third-party developers, new apps like Pandora and RadioTime, and even a dedicated browser for its cat-and-mouse game with Hulu, Boxee's future looks brighter than ever.

For the uninitiated, Boxee is media center software available for Mac OS X, the Apple TV, and, to lesser extents, Linux and Windows (Linux is a couple versions behind, and Windows is still in private testing). Boxee can play most local types of media, but its appeal is the vast catalog of Web services and video content it can handle, from direct access to networks like CNN, Comedy Central, and CollegeHumor, to support for streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. All of this is wrapped in a well-designed and functional UI that works well on both traditional computers and media boxes like the Apple TV. Soon, Boxee says that the Linux and Windows versions will be brought to feature and development parity with the Mac OS X variant.

New in the ridiculous version number of Boxee 0.9.11.5591 for Mac is the App Box, an iTunes-Store-like application directory to which developers can submit their own apps and services. "Unlike other app stores," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen says in a blog post, "Boxee does not want to be a gate keeper (or bottleneck) in deciding which applications are published." To that effect, Boxee now offers a Python API for developers, who simply need to write their GUIs in XML and add their applications to Boxee's repository. Plus, Boxee's Andrew Kippen told Ars that the company will eventually offer a payment platform for developers to hook into and make money with.

Boxee's new Pandora app in all its glory

This is a significant push into creating an expandable media center platform for the VC-supported company, which hopes to generate revenue through media partnerships and revenue sharing. Eventually, Kippen told Ars that hardware licensing and partnerships may be on the table. Boxee is already in talks with manufacturers about getting its software into game consoles, Blu-ray players, and just about anything else you can think of. Kippen would not name names, but simply left us to stew over who "pretty much all the big ones" may be.

To help the App Box to hit the ground running, Boxee also introduced two new applications in answer to popular request: Pandora and RadioTime. Both are available in the new version and do exactly what you would expect. Pandora allows users to sign in, stream music, play their QuickMixes and stations, and even create new stations. On the opposite end of this spectrum, RadioTime allows users to stream over 100,000 traditional radio stations with a drop-dead-simple UI.

The final major new feature in this release is a Boxee Browser, which, right now, is targeted primarily at bringing back support for Hulu (again). Boxee has been playing a bit of cat-and-mouse with Hulu, as the jointly owned NBC and FOX venture has made arguably weak attempts at blocking Boxee from accessing its content. While the most recent attempt involved an HTML encoding trick, Boxee has taken the next logical step and simply added a full-fledged browser based on Mozilla's technology. The Boxee Browser also "lays the groundwork" for supporting any video available on the Web.

Kippen told Ars that Boxee has a long road ahead of it. The software is still in alpha, and Kippen says there are a few milestones the company hopes to reach before even entering beta and polishing up the package. Some milestones are no small features, either, such as global search across all of Boxee's included and supported services, home screen customization, and filtering of content that has already been watched. With any of the luck typically required to keep software development timelines on track, you can look for Boxee to approach a shippable 1.0 and even appear on some hardware by the first quarter of 2010.

Isn't Boxee just XBMC with some social stuff tagged on, don't understand the hype about it myself when XBMC runs programs and has Windows/Linux/OSX versions.

If Boxee can get some sort of hardware company on-board to produce a compatible set top box more power to them (I'd like to load XBMC on it instead). This Acer Ion mini pc is about the closest thing so far as XBMC linux how has NV GPU decoding support.

I think the big draw for Boxee over XBMC is the ability to stream Hulu, CBS, et al., and function as a replacement for cable TV. The only show that I actually want to watch on Boxee that I can't get yet is Lost. I've heard rumors that you can do at least some of the same with XBMC, but I've not been able to figure out how to get it to work on my AppleTV. XBMC is much more responsive than boxee which is a big plus, but since I have the AppleTV UI for playing content I already own, the streaming content is king.

Originally posted by Red Herring:Isn't Boxee just XBMC with some social stuff tagged on, don't understand the hype about it myself when XBMC runs programs and has Windows/Linux/OSX versions.

If you call the aggregation of enough online video content to virtually replace your cable TV subscription 'some social stuff' then yes, Boxee is just XBMC with some social stuff tagged on.

I think for most, boxee is promising because the commercial interests behind it promise to bring it to set top boxes and now consoles. For all the XBMC fans who were wishing for a 360 port, boxee is probably their only hope (assuming the 360 is one of the consoles being hinted at above).

Boxee and Plex have made more development progress in the last 6 months than XBMC has in years. It's also finally kicked XBMC into gear and some important progress is finally being made (VDAPU Acceleration!).

Now if Boxee could just fix their utterly broken media metadata detection (why not just use the fully functional XBMC detection? Those nfo files are in my directories for a reason and does it still not use the ID3 tags?) and the clumsy, awful interface (MediaStream or Aeon instead please) I'm completely onboard. The links to online video are awesome.

++ to Mediastream or the new Aeon Stark skin for boxee. The current skin blows donkey chunks.

I personally prefer XBMC because it is better at reading my existing media (DVD rips, etc) and automatically drawing them into a library frontend. But Boxee is pretty awesome (if they can every get the hulu bits working). More than anything it shows promise because people are actually working on it.

Windows Media Center is crippled by its lack of codec compatibility, and the current popular hardware streamers (Popcorn Hour, TViX units, etc.) all have terrible clunky HTML-based UIs.

??

Windows Media Center uses WMP as it's player and by extension can play anything WMP can(which is pretty much anything if you install a codec pack). With MCE + CCCP there wasn't any codec or container I came across which I couldn't play.

Originally posted by crmarvin42:I think the big draw for Boxee over XBMC is the ability to stream Hulu, CBS, et al., and function as a replacement for cable TV. The only show that I actually want to watch on Boxee that I can't get yet is Lost. I've heard rumors that you can do at least some of the same with XBMC, but I've not been able to figure out how to get it to work on my AppleTV. XBMC is much more responsive than boxee which is a big plus, but since I have the AppleTV UI for playing content I already own, the streaming content is king.

There are plugins for xbmc that allow you to do all this. Install the svn plugin installer then you can install various plugins and scripts via the xbmc frontend.

Originally posted by hawk684:Boxee and Plex have made more development progress in the last 6 months than XBMC has in years. It's also finally kicked XBMC into gear and some important progress is finally being made (VDAPU Acceleration!).

I think that your criticism is misdirected. The reason why XBMC did not have VDAPU acceleration 6 months ago is because there was no such thing as VDAPU acceleration 6 months ago. NV only released it around Christmas time. Before then there was no such thing as decent GPU acceleration under Linux.

You are also forgetting that XBMC was installed on hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of original XBoxes and are being used by many, many people as a capable media player.

Originally posted by dburr:I think that your criticism is misdirected. The reason why XBMC did not have VDAPU acceleration 6 months ago is because there was no such thing as VDAPU acceleration 6 months ago. NV only released it around Christmas time. Before then there was no such thing as decent GPU acceleration under Linux.

You are also forgetting that XBMC was installed on hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of original XBoxes and are being used by many, many people as a capable media player.

VDAPU wasn't really meant to be the complaint, it's just what I'm most excited about. I'm actually really impressed how quickly VDAPU support has progress since it's only really been semi-stable (Nvidia's side of it) for a few months. If I'm going to complain about things XBMC has been missing until recently it would be: lack of easy web video (Hulu, Comedy Central, etc)slow media player (mplayer has worked with HD video for awhile, XBMC is just starting to)awful AWFUL remote control support on Linux (having 3 different config files to setup a damn IR remote is insane, I understand it's only partially their fault, but LIRC is the worst documented pain in the ass on Linux)

I love XBMC, it's an amazing accomplishment...but I also hate it because it's so buggy and so annoying to work with (the community is pretty elitist too).

The Xbox port of XBMC needs to be split out or EOL'd. It's a 700MHz P3. It's dead, you can get Atom based systems for less money that would run XBMC faster. With the Nvidia Ion systems around the corner (HD Acceleration! Don't screw up Nvidia) it's just going to be stupid to still use an Xbox.